The Top 50 Music Videos of the 1990s

20. Nine Inch Nails
"Closer" (NSFW)
[dir: Mark Romanek; 1994]

This sort of thing-- gothic imagery, of-the-moment videography, supposedly shocking sexual imagery-- should not age well. And yet... Where so many of the big alt-rock stars of the period have their sounds and looks frozen in the time capsule of the 90s, Trent Reznor at his best, such as on "Closer", could have walked into any year since this was released and had the same seismic impact.

Never work with kids or animals. Unless your star has been assassinated and your only other choice is giving a lot of camera time to Ma$e.

18. Beck
"Devil's Haircut"
[dir: Mark Romanek; 1996]

Beck certainly had goofier, funnier, arguably more likable Odelay videos, but "Devil's Haircut" is the clip that captured best who he was and what he was about at the time. Though light and humorous, "Haircut" also transmits Beck's effortless sense of cool and style, mixing together Blow-Up, Midnight Cowboy, fashion advertising, collage, hip-hop, and rural Americana.

17. Foo Fighters
"Everlong"
[dir: Michel Gondry; 1997]

Until "Let Forever Be" came along, this was the definitive Michel Gondry video, featuring Gondry staples like dreams and nightmares, touches of surrealism, and oversized objects. Nods to punk, new wave, The Evil Dead, and Teddy Boys seem at least as grounded in Dave Grohl's world as Gondry's. Whoever gets the credit, they earned it.

16. Pulp
"This Is Hardcore"
[dir: Doug Nichol; 1998]

Pulp excel as video artists when they remove themselves from the equation. "Disco 2000", "Bad Cover Version", and "A Little Soul" all either exclude the group from the action or needle them. In the "Mis-Shapes" clip, Jarvis Cocker gets mileage out of tormenting himself as a townie doppelganger. And although the group is front and center in "Babies", the real star is the way the song's narrative is played out with the video's clip-art look.

In "This Is Hardcore", everyone is a character and the impressive set piece references classic film genres like detective noir, Sirkian melodrama, suspense, and Busby Berkeley musicals. (The song itself is about another type of film-- homemade porn.) Lush, seedy, dramatic...the video captures all the artifice and scale of the cinema but suggests that when the cameras are turned off and we stop using lust or drama as a costume, the emotions we're left with are dark and empty.

15. Daft Punk
"Around the World"
[dir: Michel Gondry; 1997]

Gondry's inventive clip would be entertaining enough just for the offbeat costumes, but once you realize that each of the five sets of characters corresponds to one of the five elements of this filter disco classic-- bass (breakdancers), drums (skeletons), synth (the Esther Williams-looking bathing suit girls), guitar (skeletons), and vocals (astronaut/robot/deep-sea diver looking guys)-- the video becomes a classic as well.

14. Blur
"Coffee + TV"
[dir: Garth Jennings; 1999]

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The anthropomorphic milk carton has become of the most recognizable characters in 90s music videos. It's also a nice riff on Blur guitarist (and here singer and songwriter) Graham Coxon's difficult relationship to marketing and videos in general-- see his absence and indifference in "The Universal" for one striking example. Alas, shortly after this video, it all came true: Coxon only recorded a few more songs with Blur and he left the band early the next decade.

13. Nirvana
"In Bloom"
[dir: Kevin Kerslake; 1992]

The "fake 'Ed Sullivan'" thing has been done before, and so had the "let's mock the stuffy 1950s" thing. But seeing Kurt Cobain embrace humor while the band embraced the idea they were a "new Beatles," given the tragic conclusion to the group and Cobain's life just a few years later, adds a lot of weight to this clip.

12. Yo La Tengo
"Sugarcube"
[dir: Phil Morrison; 1997]

The video that spawned School of Rock. Everyone is funny here-- David Cross is funny. Bob Odenkirk is funny. John Ennis is funny. Most of all, Yo La Tengo are funny.

11. Aphex Twin
"Windowlicker" (NSFW)
[dir: Chris Cunningham; 1999]

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Mocking bling-bling hip-hop videos made sense for a band like the Roots; for white British guys Chris Cunningham and Richard James, it was perilous ground. The lengthy intro to "Windowlicker", with a litany of NSFW language and a lead character who is dangerously minstrel-y, sets up the absurdity of the second half and makes it even more jarring.

The clip was meant to shock, criticizing the misogyny and tunnelvisioned approach of many hip-hop videos in that "money cash hoes" by turning a mirror toward it. That Aphex Twin then littered the video with his own face (a trick he'd done in the past already) and his logo isn't so much juxtaposition as naked marketing, another way to needle the big-budget hip-hop clips of the time. Whether it succeeds as commentary is up for debate, but things like the Aphex umbrellas, the Gene Kelly meets Michael Jackson dance routine, and the absurdly long limo are little slices of brilliance.